When we were house hunting we saw a nice one in a good area, listed for £160k but on for over 2 years, it was 'cheap' for the area but hadn't seen fresh paint since the sixties, infact the kitchen appeared to have the original sixties oven etc still installed. We offered £145k and were rebuffed immediately and essentially told it was asking or nothing as they had the asking offered once before but it fell through. Given we estimated the refurb to be coming in around £30k we sacked it off. Still for sale last time I checked
Similar story with another house we offered on, mugged us off and then never sold in the end (we are friends with their neighbours so know it never sold).
As you say can only imagine it being even worse during this shit.